


holding pattern

by screechfox



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Complicated Relationships, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Season/Series 03, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21779887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screechfox/pseuds/screechfox
Summary: They don't stop the Unknowing. Jon and Tim are the only ones left.On a one-to-one level, this doesn't change things as much as you'd think.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker
Comments: 32
Kudos: 222
Collections: Rusty Quill Secret Santa 2019





	holding pattern

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shipwreckblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipwreckblue/gifts).



After the Unknowing, Jon is the only thing that’s certain.

It’s messed up. People flock to him like he’s some kind of messiah, as though Jon’s exhausted gaze, dark circles and all, will be enough to save any of them. If the Institute wasn’t a temple before, it is now — a shrine to awful certainty, to knowing exactly what lurks on those darkened street corners in the middle of the night.

Tim hates it, of course.

“I know you do,” Jon murmurs, not looking up from the book he’s reading. It’s a Leitner, menace oozing from its rust-stained cover, but Jon flicks through the pages like it’s— heh, like it’s novel.

“Get out of my head,” Tim snaps, but the words are nothing more than well-worn reflex, bitter on his tongue. He’s relying on Jon’s creepy Archivist powers as much as anyone, after all.

Jon makes a quiet sound of acknowledgement, and Tim wants to punch his teeth out.

You see, anger has a clarity that is all too welcome these days. It’s how Tim justifies coming down here to sit in an uncomfortable chair in a cramped office with a man he hates. Jon’s presence is a splinter that Tim is driving into his heart with bloodied fingers. It’s the only thing that keeps him sane.

Tim scoffs to himself. They left sanity at the door when they failed to stop the apocalypse. Everything since is just buying time before their inevitable disfigurement and death.

“No,” Jon says. The back of Tim’s neck prickles with a familiar unease, and that’s how he knows that Jon isn’t just talking to himself, or to whatever entity powers the Leitner in his hands.

“No?”

“It’s not just buying time.”

“Right. Of course it isn’t.”

Jon glances up from the book, meeting Tim’s eyes for the first time in— a few days, maybe? He’s gaunt with exhaustion, mouth pressed into a pale line of irritation. Tim refuses to feel any pity for him; you can’t squeeze blood from a stone and you can’t squeeze sympathy from Tim Stoker’s battered heart.

“We have to hope, Tim.”

Even as he speaks, there’s no trace of hope on Jon’s face. A quiet despair has settled over him like a fresh snowfall, treacherous and calm. They both know there’s no point in having hope. They’re the only two left, and Tim reckons they should have died in the wax museum together. It would have been a better ending for both of them.

Jon shows no sign of hearing these thoughts, but Tim isn’t fooled by the way his eyes flicker across the pages of the Leitner. It’s a terrible show of nonchalance, of playing house during the apocalypse. It’s… uncomfortably reminiscent of Martin.

“I’ll get some tea,” Jon says as if on cue. His joints creak audibly as he stands up from his desk.

“Fuck off,” Tim snaps. “I’ll get my own tea.”

* * *

Most of the mugs in the breakroom are covered in blood and dust. Tim hates seeing them, but he can’t be bothered with tidying them away, so they just sit there, solemn grave-markers scattered across white countertops. It’s probably unhygienic or whatever, but Tim doesn’t care.

Jon seems to treat the place like a museum, barely touching what he doesn’t need to — except for how he always uses one of Martin’s mugs. Tim would refuse to notice on principle, but the charmingly geeky slogans are incongruous when paired with literally any version of Jon. It’s the final stage in the tragedy of Martin Blackwood, Tim reasons, a guilty sting to the thought.

They each pick out one of the dwindling supply of tea-bags and position themselves at opposite ends of the kitchen. As the kettle rumbles in the background, they stand in silence, pretending not to watch each other. Outside the walls of the Institute, someone screams.

Same old, same old.

There’s a click, and they reach for the kettle at once, hands nearly brushing on the way. Jon’s fingers close around the handle first, of course, because he’s a lanky bastard with skinny fingers. Tim scowls as Jon pours the water into his mug, and he scowls as Jon hands him the kettle. It’s infuriatingly gracious; Tim would have put it down and made him fetch it himself.

“You’re welcome,” Jon murmurs, because he can’t go five seconds without making Tim want to hit him. Idly, he considers smashing his mug of boiling water over Jon’s head.

They fall into another silence as they wait for the tea to brew. To a very oblivious outside observer, it might even look comfortable. Unfortunately, Tim is experiencing it himself, and the tension is as thick in the air as it always is.

“I hate tea, you know,” Tim tells him. “Always been more of a coffee guy.”

Jon laughs quietly, though it turns into a self-conscious cough as Tim raises his eyebrows.

“I was just thinking— I’ve never enjoyed coffee, so it makes sense. Rather like cats and dogs. We were always destined to— to hate each other.” 

“You don’t hate me,” Tim says, and it’s a statement of fact.

“Obviously not,” Jon sighs.

It would be easier if Jon hated him. But Jon’s sharp words always seem to be the result of him splintering under stress. He spends hours with the rare visitors they have, helping them remember themselves and every awful thing that shaped their identity. He’s _nice_ to them. It only makes sense that he’d let out any leftover vitriol on a safe target.

“I don’t—” Jon hums into his mug of tea, contemplative. “I don’t begrudge you your anger. I’m not— well, let’s be honest, I’m not much better than the Circus in the grand scheme of things.”

Tim lets out a bitter laugh, not bothering to dignify that with a reply. _I hate you_ wars with _don’t be ridiculous_ wars with _fuck off._ Jon doesn’t deserve the intimacy of hearing any of that, and if he wants to know what Tim thinks, he’ll have to make Tim tell him.

(And of course, it’s Jon, so he’s going to try.)

“What do you see when you look at me, Tim?”

The question drops like a stone in the emptiness of the breakroom, sending ripples across the grain of the floorboards. The tinge of unhappiness to the lines of Jon’s face is the worst part: of course Jon can’t even be a monster without screwing it up for himself.

“Don’t,” Tim gets out through gritted teeth. “Don’t do that.”

“What do you see?” Jon repeats, and there’s a pleading, desperate edge to his voice.

Honesty rises in Tim’s throat with the syrupy too-sweetness of children’s medicine. The Eye is playing tricks in Tim’s head, trying to find the angle that will make all the words spill out. The remnants of long-rotted affection; the petty desire to tell Jon everything Tim hates about him; the fact that they’re both stuck here with each other anyway, so what’s the point in pretending?

There’s a moment where Tim thinks he might even answer, and then the pressure fades from the air. Jon sags like someone’s cut all his strings. Tea splashes onto his wrist, soaking into the white of his shirt, and he ignores it.

“I’m sorry,” he says, like he’s said a hundred times before the Unknowing and a thousand times since. “Tim— I’m sorry.”

Tim takes a swig of still-hot tea, scowling at the gentle flavour that lingers on his tongue. Martin never had good taste in anything. He sets his mug down in the ever-growing pile of unwashed dishes and he meets Jon’s gaze with defiance.

“Yeah, well. Apologies don’t change anything, do they?”

“If they did…” Jon trails off, running his free hand through the grey streaks of his hair. He laughs again, hollow and unhappy. “If they did, I doubt we’d be here.”

* * *

After finishing his tea, Jon goes back into his office and locks the door behind him.

Just like every time they’ve had the apology conversation before, Tim refuses to feel guilty about what he’s said. Jon can’t atone for all the ways he’s screwed up Tim’s life, and he needs to accept that Tim is never going to be able to forgive him. Some things are too big to be put back together once they’re broken. The world, for instance.

Tim occupies himself in the other office, the one that used to be his and Sasha’s and Martin’s before everything went wrong. Martin’s sticker-covered laptop still sits on his desk next to a battered copy of Richard Siken’s poetry. There are lines in the dust on the cover where Tim has dragged his fingers over it, unable to bring himself to open the book and give in to grief.

Sasha— well. He’d rather not think of Sasha, if at all possible.

There are other remnants of other people scattered around the room. A knife gleams in a half-open drawer of the third desk in the room — the one Melanie claimed after she got dragged into this. One of Basira’s books rests on the cushion of a chair, still in its library wrappings. There’s a daisy pendant marking her page.

Tim settles down in his own chair, on his own laptop, and tries to make peace with the quiet.

The internet is still working — the Stranger does a lot with online interaction. It’s a small loophole of the apocalypse, but not a mercy. Tim can watch and read all sorts of things, pretending the world is still normal. He tries not to speak with anyone if he can help it.

(Except— occasionally, against all his misgivings, he signposts some poor lost soul to the Magnus Institute. Sometimes they even manage to get here.)

He doesn’t see Jon again until after nightfall, and that’s only because he waits outside the office door for Jon to get restless and leave. His hands are fidgeting aimlessly, but they go still when he sees Tim leaning against the wall.

The awful thing is that anything can become a routine if you have to live with it for long enough. Taking chunks out of each other in Jon’s office is a routine. Drinking shit tea and dissolving into futile self-pity is a routine. And this— this is a routine too.

“You need to get some sleep, boss,” Tim says, too quiet, too genuine.

Jon stares at him. His eyes don’t reveal a thing. Windows to the soul, Tim thinks not.

“Right. I suppose— Well, it isn’t as though I have much work to do. A rest would be— nice.”

Tim steps forward and slings an arm over Jon’s shoulders. It’s far too easy to fall back into old patterns of camaraderie. Jon isn’t the only one who’s tired.

“See, that’s how I know you need some sleep. Otherwise you’d have put up more of a fight.”

Jon laughs. His shoulder is corpse-cold below Tim’s hand. Tim finds his grip tightening while they walk to the storage room; anything to make Jon seem closer to something like humanity.

(Most of the time, Jon is normal. A little quieter and a little spookier, maybe. But when the Archives are threatened, his merciless gaze tears the Stranger’s puppets to shreds.)

The cot is small and uncomfortable. Neither of them fit properly on their own, let alone together. They’ve assembled a loose collection of blankets from various corners of the Institute, but it’s never quite enough to warm them up. In close proximity, Jon seems very fragile, glass-sharp angles that could fracture under any weight.

Tim’s hands settle on Jon’s arms, thumbs pressed gently into the divots of scars — that irregular honeycomb pattern that marks them both. Jon’s breath hitches, but he doesn’t move away.

“This good?” Tim asks. In this part of their terrible routine, he’s allowed to be concerned.

“I… Yes, Tim. It’s—”

Jon shifts, rough fingers running across Tim’s skin. His touch doesn’t linger on Prentiss’ scars, but on the lines scored into Tim’s flesh — the lines where a thing pretending to be his brother had cut into him, skin parting from raw red muscle inch by agonising inch. Jon had rescued him.

“It’s nice,” Jon finishes at last, as though they aren’t walking reminders of each other’s trauma.

“Cheers, boss,” Tim mutters. “You know how to make a guy feel special.”

There’s a huff of cold breath against Tim’s shirt, and then Jon is resting his head on Tim’s chest, ear over his heart. Jon lets out another sigh, relaxing below Tim’s hands.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] holding pattern](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28536423) by [Jet_pods (Jetainia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jetainia/pseuds/Jet_pods)




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